New research on male Barbary macaques indicates that these primates have a flexible metabolic physiology, which help them survive by changing the speed of chemical reactions within their bodies, and consequently levels of ...

Papa might not have been a rolling stone, according to a new study that examined the mating dynamics of transient wildlife that have dispersed from other areas. The researchers found if males traveling from long distances ...

By the looks of it, size should be a big thing when it comes to seed bugs mating, but it only matters when more than one mating partner is around to choose from. That is what researchers Liam Dougherty and David Shuker of ...

Elizabeth Droge-Young has long been fascinated by the mysteries and motivations behind sexual selection. But the promiscuity among females of one particular species—the red flour beetle—had her particularly stumped. These ...

Mating

In biology, mating is the pairing of opposite-sex or hermaphroditic organisms for copulation and, in social animals, also to raise their offspring. For animals, mating methods include random mating, disassortative mating, assortative mating, or a mating pool.

In some birds, for example, it includes nest-building and feeding offspring. The human practice of making domesticated animals mate and of artificially inseminating them is part of animal husbandry.

Copulation is the union of the sex organs of two sexually reproducing animals for insemination and subsequent internal fertilization. The two individuals may be of opposite sexes or hermaphroditic, as is the case with, for example, snails.